Founding Feathers
by infiniteviking
Summary: There's nothing quite like meeting a long-lost companion when she's still traveling with your previous self. Especially when it involves chasing chickens. Six, Five, and Peri, angst and humour in equal parts.


(Written for eclecticmuse during Livejournal's Sixathon.)

**Founding Feathers**

"It's coming from just over that ridge," the Doctor didn't say.

Instead, he stalked up the slope with the solitary, self-righteous air of a man on a mission more important than anything else in the vicinity, darting suspicious glances at the sunlit trees and kicking up seeding grass with his yellow-striped ankles. Solitary: that was the killer. There was little point pontificating to a landscape that would never talk back.

Glancing down at the locator in his hand, he let out an irritated sigh, then clamped his lips together stubbornly. He'd hardly spoken a word in three days. Peri would have taken the opportunity to make some remark; it was vexing that she wasn't here to accuse him of sulking, so he could prove her wrong. It was vexing, altogether, how the entire universe had conspired to put her beyond his reach, and he certainly wasn't about to pretend he owed it a monologue.

The tracker whined, and he frowned at it, then stumbled back as a lanky bird burst out of the bushes at his feet. _Chikkerie_, his mind supplied, a remote descendant of Gallus gallus domesticus, bred by this subset of humanity for meat, sport, and insulating feathers; fortunately hunting season wouldn't be for another month or so, judging by the flavor of the wind. The cackling fowl sprinted over the ridge, heedless of the immediate hazards of higher temporal mechanics, but the Doctor shifted his attention back to the readouts.

If he didn't know better, he would have sworn the Neiref was moving. How could it be moving, unless something was carrying it? Unless someone had found it -- and if someone discovered its secrets, turned it to vile uses, bent time itself to their pitiful whim, then--

"Aaaaah!"

Really, now. What were the chances of stepping on someone's foot out in a wilderness like this?

Straightening his coat, the Doctor steadied himself, pretended he had _not_ just sprung backwards by almost a yard, and prepared to verbally shred the idiot who had been hiding among the gorsebushes and was now scrambling to stand upright on an ankle that was hopefully not twisted beyond repair.

Instead, he said, "Peri."

What were the chances.

**.o0o.**

Her ankle was fine; that was easy to see, from the weight she was putting on it as she stomped towards him. At her shout, a fair-haired man had scrambled out of another clump of shrubbery, holding a locator identical to the Doctor's. Rather literally identical, actually. The Doctor shoved his own one into his pocket, to avoid a reality-altering paradox, thinking briefly that it was a shame he and his former self couldn't share at least a few other superficial characteristics.

"Why don't you watch where you're going?" Peri complained, and he retorted, "Watch where I'm going? Why don't you watch where you choose to indulge in an afternoon siesta?" and for a moment, it was too familiar to bear. His other self bustled up then, with an expression changing from vague surprise to vague dismay, and _I was too much like that_ the Doctor thought, and the light-haired man could be seen to muse _is this what I will become_.

Peri was staring at his blue greatcoat, its deep hue muddied by yesterday's incident at Twer Vexithea. He half expected her to snipe, "At least you've toned it down a little," but of course she didn't remember the other one.

"If you've quite finished taking me in," he said sharply.

Peri's lip curled, and she looked from Doctor to Doctor. "Do you know each other?"

"Yes," said the Doctor.

"No," said the other Doctor.

They looked angrily at each other and growled "In a fashion," and "Not really," at the same time, and the Doctor snorted, and his previous self huffed, and Peri glowered at them both, clearly feeling left out of the joke.

"He was just going," said Peri's Doctor through his teeth.

"Indeed I was not." With a glare at his counterpart, the Doctor stepped in front, completely blocking him off. "Miss Brown, I take it? Your _charming_ companion has told me all about you. Or will -- your future, of course, my past, these things are bound to happen once in a while."

The other Doctor had shouldered his way ahead. "An exaggeration. As it transpires, this gentleman is almost as qualified in chronopathic circuitry as I am--"

"Ex_cuse_ me--"

"--so we'd best be off and leave him to it. Come along, Peri--"

"Now just a moment," protested Peri. "You're telling me we came all this way and you're just going to leave the thing to him? He knows who we are -- how did he know--?"

"In point of fact--"

"In point of fact," the Doctor interjected, "I am simply passing through. Another voyager in the temporal ocean, much like yourselves."

"Nothing at all like ourselves," grumbled Peri's Doctor.

"What's your name?" challenged Peri.

The Doctor didn't bat an eye. "John Smith."

Peri sent a sidelong glance at her companion. "That's the same name as--"

"Oh, we all use that name." Ostentatiously retrieving his locator, the Doctor twisted the dial, making a show of becoming more interested in it than them. Just over that ridge, the Neiref was, and getting further away every moment. "You wouldn't believe how common it is. Saves a tremendous amount of time and trouble."

"Then who are you really?" she asked

"I'm as much John Smith as I am anyone else."

"Doesn't that mean not at all?"

He glanced up sharply, and Peri shivered a bit, the way she'd used to do when he looked at her like that. Drat the girl. She always managed to half-conceptualize things that should have been utterly beyond her tiny little Earth mind, and then adding insult to injury by failing to follow them through to their conclusion.

"I assume you're on the trail of the Neiref, just as I am," he said. It was odd, this feeling of detachment. Almost as though if he tried, he could really believe that the girl before him was a complete stranger: that they had never really met, and never parted at all.

"That," said Peri's Doctor, rubbing the back of his neck, "is a bit of a long story."

**.o0o.**

"Summer," Peri had told him once, "should be long and lazy, full of bright, beautiful days and lounging around in the sun, but in reality it just drags out and you get sunburn and sand under your clothes and then go home and half the time can't remember what you'd been doing." And it was funny, he thought, how that was almost exactly the way he thought about Time.

They'd gone fishing that day, and various other things had happened, leaving him with a double memory of Sontarans and Seville, and Peri, and Jamie McCrimmon, and a headache because his other self's memories had remained locked in his mind until they'd caught up with his future. It happened so often now. He could see it in his own face. After a stretch of frenzied action he'd wake to find nothing left but impressions, placeholders for memories that would tap gently at the doors of his mind in quiet times like this.

"It's _what_?!"

"Tangled around a chikkerie's leg, yes, aren't you listening?"

And that was another thing. He hadn't remembered his meek, bland former self as having any sort of a temper.

"We've been trying to corner it for hours," said the other Doctor, mopping his brow. His hands were scratched, and there were bits of heather stuck to his coat. Peri, her face flushed and skin stained with reddish dirt, looked even more disreputable. "They're only half-tame, you know; it lets us get close, but not close enough to catch the chain."

"Well, at least none of the natives got ahold of it." That was something, anyway. The damage an untrained psyche could do with that thing in its grasp -- to say nothing of the damage to the psyche itself -- didn't bear contemplating. "In that case, what's holding you back?"

"Well." Peri folded her arms. "If you'll listen a minute, there's some kind of riot going on down in the village--"

The noise was rather audible, come to that. The Doctor shot a flat glance at his former self. "I suppose you started it."

"As if you would've done better--"

"_Hey_!"

They both stopped dead. What a pair of lungs that girl had.

"Look, we just barely got away. It'd be hard enough for us to stay undercover and still catch that bird thing." She looked again at the Doctor, her eyes reflecting disbelief at... well, he decided to believe it was the sheer scope of him that so amazed her. "With three of us, it'd be impossible."

Her Doctor's brow creased. "That won't do at all. We can't just hang about waiting for the chain to come loose. The damage that an untrained psyche could accomplish with that thing doesn't bear thinking about."

"Well then," said the Doctor -- _the_ Doctor, this washed-out chap was only a pale imitation of his full potentiality -- "_well_ then," he said, straightening his vest, "we appear to have a feathered rout on our hands." And he strode down into the copse without looking back, and Peri and the other Doctor had to scramble after him.

"You should take your coat off! You'll ruin it!" Peri shouted at his back.

Confounded woman. Always worried about the wrong things.

**.o0o.**

Chikkeries were a nuisance. Their feathers got everywhere. They all looked alike, save for small differences in coloring of which the Doctor did not deign to keep track. The males tried to attack anything that moved, the females were just as aggressive if something threatened their nests, and the friendly ones had a disconcerting habit of mobbing intruders in search of treats. Worst of all, they were _fast_.

Had he been in a better temper, the Doctor might have felt expansive toward the fleeing bird that had had the misfortune to tangle the Neiref's thin chain around its foot. After all, chasing it had led them far away from the rioting village, and from the second TARDIS which he didn't feel like explaining to Peri. But the sun burnt him, and the heather pricked at him, and the long grass tickled his nose, and he was not in a grateful mood.

"It's coming towards you!" called Peri.

"Don't let it get past you this time!" shouted the Doctor's former self, from somewhat further afield.

"_I_ wasn't the one that spooked it!" the Doctor shouted back. So far, he and his counterpart had been able to keep a reasonable distance between them -- a small mercy indeed.

The chikkerie, with the deceptively harmless-looking amulet glinting and skipping behind its claw, waffled from side to side, aware that something was afoot. The Doctor, holding his arms akimbo (he'd left his coat behind after all, as it had proven cumbersome), cautiously herded it toward a rocky outcropping, and then groaned as the bird flapped its wings and flew clumsily over and out of sight.

"Again," complained the other Doctor, shambling up out of the grass.

The Doctor looked him up and down.

"You look like a bale of straw."

"Have you seen yourself lately?"

"Did I always get _quite_ that out of breath just from climbing a hill?"

"Well, I'm certainly not looking forward to your side of this little jaunt--"

"Just _stop_!" yelled Peri, practically right into their ears.

A few choice curse words ran through the Doctor's mind. Careless, careless... couldn't have her putting two and two together; she still had to be bewildered and confused when his previous self was going to have breathed his last. (It had all got a bit muddled after that.)

But Peri apparently hadn't heard; she was eying her companion in a cagey, worried manner that reminded the Doctor uncomfortably of those muddled days. He brought out the worst in himself, apparently. If there was a moral to that, he didn't want to know.

"--Seriously, you haven't gone on like that since we met the Master! And you -- you're leading him on! Can't you just stop it and get along until this is over?" She leaned forward, arms akimbo, staring them both down in that brave, blustering way she had when she knew no one would listen but was pretending it didn't sting. "If that necklace thing's so dangerous, it'd be stupid to lose it just because you two can't have a civil conversation."

Turning her back, she stalked toward the low end of the rock, hoisted herself up with both hands and one foot in a jagged crack, swung her legs over and disappeared.

The younger Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets, looking troubled. The older one slid him a sideways look and said in a tone full of irony, "After you."

"Oh, no, my dear fellow," said Peri's Doctor. He'd long since stopped trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "After _you_."

They clambered up together, looked over the top of the boulder, and then threw themselves backwards out of sight as whining bolts of electricity tore through the air where their faces had just been.

"_What_--?"

"It's the perimeter--"

They both stopped in the middle of a breath. "_Peri_--"

"Doctor!?" She was scrambling back over the rock, panic in her eyes.

"I'm fine," the Doctor said automatically, and felt it like a blow to the chest when she snarled, confused and angry, "I wasn't talking to _you_!"

He staggered upright, braced his back against the stone and stewed as Peri's Doctor nattered breathlessly about the colony's automatic defense system and how they had just been classified as dangerous. Of course that was absurd. "Dangerous," the Doctor scoffed, popped up to get a look, and was hauled back down by his counterpart in the nick of time. _I had strong hands at least_ warred in his mind with _leave go, I'm not helpless_ and _infernal cheek, doesn't it know what it's shooting at?_ and he felt among his curls for traces of the near miss, but there was no smell of singed hair, so that was a positive sign.

When he looked at his past again, they were shoulder to shoulder, checking the range on the younger Doctor's scanning device. The Doctor watched them for a moment, trying to think about rogue technology instead of escaping birds.

The answer hit without warning, as important things so often had.

Pulling an arm out of his coat, he flipped the empty sleeve up above the rock. Nothing happened. Then he waved his hand into the danger zone, pulling it back immediately. A blue bolt crackled overhead.

"Will you at least _try_ not to get killed off?" hissed the other Doctor.

He ignored himself. "Peri," he exclaimed, "you didn't get shot!"

"Thanks for noticing," she said dryly.

"But that's an automated defense mechanism. You were on the other side of the rock, and it didn't shoot _you_."

"Maybe I was too fast for it," said Peri uncertainly. But the other Doctor stared in dawning comprehension. "No. Oh, no, don't even start--"

"It could be because she's human," the Doctor mused, ignoring him. "This is a human colony at this stage. It makes sense. Whatever the reason, the system doesn't recognize her as a threat."

"You'd take that chance with her life?" demanded Peri's Doctor.

The Doctor kept on ignoring him. It had seemed to work out the first time. Beyond his younger self, framed by a streak of sunlight inching around the far end of the rock, Peri looked worn out and at patience's end.

_I know you better than you know yourself, Peri Brown_, he didn't say. _I know how loyal you are, and how compassionate, and how brave, and how forgiving. I know your laughter, and the look in your eye when you think you're left behind, and the tilt of your head when there's no way out._

_I know where you came from._

_I know why you stayed._

"I'd like to see you succeed," he drawled, "where two Time Lords have come up dry. Pity betting's illegal here."

Peri gave him a look that was altogether too wise. "You're not trying to reverse-psych me into going out there, are you?"

Drat. "Wouldn't dream of it."

"Liar."

"_Moi_?"

"You're sure whatever's defending that field isn't dangerous?"

"Not to you. I am being entirely candid." _And what's more, the me whom I used to be knows it_.

"Well." She scowled, stubborn, and strands of hair blew across her face as she looked back at the rock. She'd cut it soon, he remembered, and later let it grow longer again, forever tinkering with the fine line between style and practicality.

Then she nodded, and despite himself, he smiled.

**.o0o.**

A few minutes' investigation revealed the location and range of the automated defense system, and confirmed that it didn't recognize Peri as an enemy. With that small reassurance, she clambered over the rocks again and set off across the field, while the two Time Lords crouched at the low end of the ridge with an improvised periscope made of oddments from their pockets, muttering blackly and jostling one another for a better view.

The chikkerie seemed to have reached the edge of its normal range; it tracked uneasily to and fro, seeking a way past Peri and back to its flock. Peri, not slow to take advantage, determinedly blocked its path, heckling it in tones ranging from peevish to incensed. Tired as the bird might be, the girl seemed even more frazzled, and after a brief time, the Doctor pulled away from the periscope, rolled back against the stone with his hands laced over his middle, and pretended to go to sleep.

It was a peaceable little planet, as he recalled: quiet, unspoiled; a tranquil paradise. (Aside from the rioting in the village.) There was a warm meadow smell and a soft breeze, and Peri's shouts blended nicely into the background. _Too bad we didn't come here before_, he thought. _Well, after_. Back in his fishing days. She might have liked it.

As expected, his former self didn't let the silence linger.

"Not worried at all, are you?"

The Doctor didn't open his eyes. "I give her a thirty percent chance of actually laying hands on the creature. She was always--" he waved a hand, seeking the right words -- "appallingly resolute."

The "was" hung in the air between them, but he didn't dare take it back. Peri's Doctor was silent, mulling over the implications without lowering the periscope. With both of their minds tightly closed against temporal contamination, it was impossible to hear his thoughts, yet far too easy to follow their thread along the most likely -- the inevitable -- lines.

"You're obviously traveling alone."

"How very observant."

"Are you always this disagreeable?"

"It's part of my natural charm."

"I was afraid of that."

"You know, she can't remember any of this," said the Doctor callously. "I'll leave that up to you, shall I? Find a convenient moment and--"

"You never stop, do you," said the other Doctor through gritted teeth.

There was a shout from the field, and they both scrambled for the eyepiece. Some distance away, Peri was kicking at the chikkerie, shouting furiously as its sharp spurs hooked in at her leg again. She shouted, waving her hands, and the bird darted backwards again, still cut off from the perimeter.

Both Doctors sat back, the elder ostentatiously fanning his brow with one hand. The younger looked troubled -- why had he ever worn his emotions so openly? -- and defiant, which, if the Doctor recalled correctly, usually meant that he was about to say something very brave and very, very unwise.

He looked at himself, feeling his jaw set in a way he hadn't had in him until such a short time ago, and lied, flatly and realistically.

"As I said. Nothing whatever to worry about."

The other Doctor, unconvinced, tried to stare him down. Didn't back off, there was that much to say for him. (Yes, that was how it went. Nothing could ever threaten the ones he chose to stand with him.) He stared back, though, his eyes careless, heavy-lidded, and at last they both turned for a look through the lens.

Just in time to see Peri hit the ground.

They both stood instinctively, ducking instinctively as electricity shot over their heads, each nearly shouting, each swallowing his words as he realized Peri had thrown herself deliberately on the chikkerie. There was a moment's struggle, and then the rumpled fowl was haring past them to freedom as Peri held up a victorious fist with the glittering amulet dangling from its fine chain.

"She did it," whooped the younger Doctor, breaking into a beaming smile and raising his voice to call, "Peri! Well done!"

The Doctor said nothing. He'd already spoken more in the past few hours than he had in a week. Instead, he retrieved his small mirror from the periscope and moved off toward the high portion of the rock where he couldn't see Peri stomping back to them, smudged all over with unnameable muck, flushed, irritated, and triumphant.

"Well." He brushed off his trousers ostentatiously, though between this and Twer Vexithea, the TARDIS filters would be clogged with feathers and bits of ground cover for days. "Best be off then. Give my deepest personal regards to Miss Brown. I doubt we'll be meeting again."

"Give her your own regards," said his counterpart, brows rising into his lank hair. "Weren't you after the Neiref?"

"I only came so the people here wouldn't get hold of it. You're welcome to the thing; I wouldn't think of depriving you." The long grass sloped down into the valley whence they'd come: less than a mile, as the crow flew (or the cat meandered), to where they'd left two time machines and one blue coat.

"Doctor."

He stopped, half-turned toward his younger self -- only half-turned, since the crisis was over, the enemy conquered, the prize won, and it wasn't as though there were anything left between them.

"Yes, Doctor?" he said neutrally.

The young Doctor's mild voice was even and perhaps faintly recriminatory. "Tell me I'm not going to moon about like that forever."

The Doctor held still for just a touch too long, but it was too bright a day to whip up a satisfactory head of thunder. He spread his hands disarmingly, smiling a smile meant to be grand, eloquent, artistic, aloof, and just a bit mad. Rather like himself.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," he said, and was almost sincere.

He spent the next few days muttering balefully at short circuits under the console, getting wire-burns and grease all over his fingers and shirt, because chikkerie feathers really did get everywhere. But the ship still flew, and time went with it, and neither seemed any worse for a good harangue.


End file.
